With the fates of most current primetime shows decided, including pick-ups for next season (only the decision for most of CBS’ freshman shows beyond Supergirl remains unknown), the 2016 Upfronts have officially begun, as networks begin revealing their Fall 2016 television schedules. This year, NBC is kicking things off, with the outline of its Fall schedule, and the confirmation of which shows are being held for midseason.
Considering the large amount of shows that the network cancelled over the past few days especially (Undateable, Telenovela, Mysteries of Laura, Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris, The Player, Crowded, Truth be Told, Heartbeat and Heroes Reborn were all given the axe), they’ve done quite a bit of timeslot shuffling, especially in regards to re-positioning big hits from this season like Blindspot and Superstore. More surprising however is the considerable amount of big shows that NBC isn’t launching right away, and is instead holding for midseason, possibly in case they need to shuffle their schedule again to goose their ratings.
While it’s unsurprising that high-profile DC Comics-themed sitcom, Powerless is being held for midseason, considering that this has been pretty normal for NBC’s biggest sitcom pitch of the season since the debut of The Office in 2005, high-profile drama spin-offs like Chicago Justice and The Blacklist: Redemption being reserved for 2017 feels pretty unorthodox. Even Taken and Emerald City, the network’s two other most high-profile drama pitches beyond the aforementioned spin-offs, are sitting out this year and waiting for midseason, leaving returning hits like Blindspot, Superstore, The Blacklist, Law & Order: SVU and the current Chicago trinity to hold up NBC’s Fall schedule, thus leaving the network purely playing defense for the rest of this year. NBC benching their biggest and best new show pitches until next year is quite the gamble, though perhaps the long game is the right call, given how much NBC’s midseason lineup flopped this year, beyond the highly successful Superstore.
Among the new shows that will be debuting this Fall, Timeless is arguably the largest-scale drama, occupying the former timeslot of Blindspot on late Monday nights as a new action-adventure-style series, involving a group of experts that must hunt a criminal throughout time, before he alters the timeline to the point of destroying history. The other new NBC drama series for this Fall, This is Us, which will air in the former timeslot of the now-moved Chicago Med, tells the story of multiple people born on the same day, whose lives intersect in various surprising fashions. Finally, NBC’s lone Fall sitcom, The Good Place, will utilize Superstore as a new lead-in on NBC’s Thursday night lineup, and will star Kristen Bell as a woman named Eleanor Shellstrop, who unusually winds up in the afterlife, and discovers that she hasn’t been a very good person. With the help of an ‘afterlife mentor’, played by Ted Danson, Eleanor will make an effort to shed her troublesome ways and become a better person.
With that out of the way, here are the timeslots for NBC’s upcoming Fall shows, which currently don’t have premiere dates:
MONDAY:
– THE VOICE [Season Eleven] (8:00-10:00 P.M.)
– TIMELESS [New Series] (10:00-11:00 P.M.)
TUESDAY:
– THE VOICE [Season Eleven] (8:00-9:00 P.M.)
– THIS IS US [New Series] (9:00-10:00 P.M.)
– CHICAGO FIRE [Season Five] (10:00-11:00 P.M.)
WEDNESDAY:
– BLINDSPOT [Season Two] (8:00-9:00 P.M.)
– LAW & ORDER: SVU [Season Eighteen] (9:00-10:00 P.M.)
– CHICAGO P.D. [Season Four] (10:00-11:00 P.M.)
THURSDAY:
– SUPERSTORE [Season Two] (8:00-8:30 P.M.)
– THE GOOD PLACE [New Series] (8:30-9:00 P.M.)
– CHICAGO MED [Season Two] (9:00-10:00 P.M.)
– THE BLACKLIST [Season Four] (10:00-11:00 P.M.)
FRIDAY:
– CAUGHT ON CAMERA WITH NICK CANNON [Season Three] (8:00-9:00 P.M.)
– GRIMM [Season Six] (9:00-10:00 P.M.)
– DATELINE NBC [Season Twenty-Four] (10:00-11:00 P.M.)
SATURDAY:
– SATURDAY DATELINE MYSTERIES [Season Twenty-Four] (8:00-10:00 P.M.)
– SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE [Encores] (10:00-11:00 P.M.)
SUNDAY:
– FOOTBALL NIGHT IN AMERICA [7:00-8:20 P.M.)
– NBC’S SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL [8:20-11:00 P.M.)
Almost every show ended up displaced to new days or times in NBC’s heavily altered Fall 2016 schedule, beyond a few mainstays like Chicago Fire, Grimm and Law & Order: SVU, despite the network only hosting a modest three new shows this Fall. The network clearly has a lot of faith in Timeless, to the point where their biggest hit from this season, Blindspot has been banished to Wednesday nights to make room for it, where it’s replacing the now-scrapped Mysteries of Laura. Moving Superstore to Thursdays is no doubt a smart move as well, since Monday nights are becoming pretty crowded with big dramas across several networks at this point, and while the new timeslot places it in direct competition with the juggernaut sitcom, The Big Bang Theory on CBS during most of the year, The Big Bang Theory’s advanced age will probably see it concluding in the next year or two, with NBC no doubt hoping to take advantage of the ensuing vacuum with their own biggest current sitcom in the same slot, while also providing a nice ratings booster for new sitcom, The Good Place.
We’ll be sure to keep an eye on when high-profile new NBC shows will premiere, so keep tuning in to Eggplante for all major news and updates on NBC’s primetime schedule.